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The first part of this article’s title refers to the universal practice throughout the whole of Western music of taking another piece of music as the starting point for a composer’s own – an approach Friedrich Kuhlau may have used more than any other composer. The title’s second part refers to a more modest attempt to pin down the stylistic features and characteristics particularly connected with him.
There are many ways one can borrow from other composers, and these various modes have had many names. In the Middle Ages and, particularly, in the Renaissance, the so-called parody technique was common, and there were “parody masses.” In music, the word “parody” does not mean – as we normally understand it in literature, for example – that you are making fun of something. To the contrary, it means that your admiration for another work of art leads you to embrace it and, to a certain degree, imitate it. In a “parody mass,” this happens in such a heavy-handed way that one or more sections of the other art work are incorporated unchanged – simply with a new text. Here, we are not talking about an imitation but about a direct loan that could be from the work of another or one’s own. In the former case, this was not considered unlawful thievery. In the Renaissance, what was borrowed also underwent an adaptation and, in that case, you use the word paraphrase – for example, in a “paraphrase mass.”
As all the movements of the mass were built on the same theme, it was common to take the theme from a chanson, i.e. a short, secular composition, and the mass was named for it. The most used chanson was a ballad from the Middle Ages, L’homme armé [The Armed Man] and another chanson by Dufay (ca. 1400-1474), Se la face ay pale [If My Face is Pale (It is Due to Love)].
It was also common to borrow directly or in an adapted form from one’s own and others’ work during the Baroque age. There are countless examples in the vocal music of J.S. Bach, Händel and many others when, due to time pressure or some other reason, they used older movements that have been given a new text.
But there are just as many instances – perhaps, even more – in which they go beyond parody and paraphrase and compose something new, which still has so many similarities to another work that you can call it a “model technique,” which is this article’s true subject.
Among the three great classical composers, one finds the fewest models in Haydn, many in Beethoven (Haydn, Clementi, Mozart, Cherubini), and the most in Mozart, particularly from Johann Christian Bach, the youngest of Bach’s sons, and a whole host of contemporary composers.
How great the admiration of the model and his music was – and in no way did they try to hide this – appears from the central aspect of the model technique: that, in most cases by far, the “imitation” was so close to the music that had inspired the composer that the tempo, the key, the time signature, and the whole character and mood of the piece remained the same. This applies especially to the key. A key that deviates from the model – though almost always in the relevant major or minor – can be found, but it is a rarity. Composers of the past connected various major and minor keys to something particular. There was a symbolism to key signatures that has, for the most part, been lost to contemporary ears and goes back to the Baroque doctrine of affects, in which certain emotions (affects) were connected with certain keys: C major with triumph, sunlight and love, G major with pastoral idyll and carefree farmers, D major with war and vengeance, D minor with the demonic, G minor with grief, C minor with anger, and F minor with passion. If one used the same key as the model, it was because it fit, was a fixed part of the theme and just as determinative for the music as its thematic and/or compositional similarity and, to a high degree, an important part of the atmosphere of the work. One must always keep in mind that using the model technique was not musical thievery (which would be exposed immediately) but a tribute (which would please the creator, if he were still alive).
Composers might become familiar with the music of others by hearing it at a public concert or at private affairs, both often during journeys to other cities or countries, or “reading” it in one of the many printed scores of the time that could be found in abundance in the period’s lending libraries. For Mozart, the former was probably the most common, for Beethoven the latter. Kuhlau must have done both. He travelled quite a bit but was also influenced by music he could “only” have studied or heard in another way.
How interested he was in everything new and unfamiliar is shown by the following. At the home of Frederik Høegh-Guldberg (1771-1852), some of whose poetry Kuhlau had set to music, where he visited frequently and felt the most comfortable, one of his sons related: “He possessed a remarkable skill for sight-reading, and he often put this on display every evening when he was visiting the Guldbergs, where there was always music before dinner. He usually asked one of the sons whether there was any music, and he often selected something he did not know, for that amused him most; if he ran across something he called bad, he might laugh heartily and loudly while playing and exclaim without stopping: ‘Der Herr Komponist ist ein verfluchter dummer Kerl’ [‘The distinguished composer is an accursed idiot’], but if he encountered something beautiful and gripping, he stopped and read it through one more time and thereupon composed a free fantasy on it.”
He had his tentacles out everywhere in the music that was played in Europe during the Classical and early Romantic period of which he was a part, and he distinguished himself in this respect from many contemporary – and later – composers, who kept to the musical culture of their own countries. This can be illustrated by some clear, well-known examples, both where the character is the same and where the similarity is purely thematic for which there are examples in music. (The model is mentioned last. The Arabic numeral after the opus number provides the number of the work in an opus with several works and the Roman numeral the movement).
Mozart: Piano sonata, B-flat major (K.V. 333), I – Johann Christian Bach: Piano sonata, G major op. 17, 5, I.
Mozart: Overture to Die Zauberflöte, beginning of the allegro (E-flat major) – Clementi: Piano sonata, B major op. 24, 2, I – (Ex. 1)
Beethoven: Eroica/Prometheus theme (E-flat major!) – Clementi: Piano sonata, F minor op. 13, 6, III (Ex. 2)
Beethoven: Egmont overture (F minor) – Cherubini: Overture to the opera Medea (F minor)
Wagner: Overture to Der fliegende Holländer (D minor) – Weber: Overture to Rübezahl/Beherrscher der Geister (D minor)
Wagner: Overture to Tannhäuser (E major) – Berlioz: Roméo et Juliette, finale (B major) - (Ex. 3)
Verdi: Rigoletto, no. 9 duet (A-flat major) – Rossini: Otello, no. 7 duet (A major) – (Ex. 4)
Verdi: Rigoletto, no. 11 quartet (D-flat major) – Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor, finale II: sextet (D-flat major)
Nielsen: Humoresque for piano op. 3, 2 (A minor) – Grieg: Peer Gynt, no. 16 “Anitra’s dance” (A minor)
Rachmaninoff: Piano concerto no. 3 I, III (D minor) – Rubinstein: Piano concerto, no. 4 I, III (D minor)
Among Kuhlau’s borrowings from German, Austrian, Italian, French, Danish and Swedish composers, his favorite composers naturally appear more frequently than others. Who they are may be determined, in part, from his own statements. His great idol is Mozart, whose “shoe clamps,” i.e. shoe buckles, he was not “worthy of loosening,” while he kisses “Paer die Hände” and “Cherubini die Füsse.” The rank order, thus, is Mozart in first place, then Cherubini and, in third place, the now almost forgotten Italian-French opera composer Ferdinando Paer (1771-1839), who today is mostly remembered for having, like Beethoven, written a “Leonora” opera.
Kuhlau’s statements seem to derive from an earlier point in his life and refer to the opera composers who had the greatest significance for his own operatic style. Since he does not mention Beethoven, who was without doubt his second great idol alongside Mozart, it must be due to the fact that he considers him primarily as an instrumental composer. Nor does he mention the two composers who, in his later years from around 1820 until his death in 1832, influenced his operatic style very much – namely, Rossini and Weber (in that order), even though Mozart is still his great ideal, when he writes operas, and Beethoven, when he writes instrumental music.
Of the list below of 66 works by Kuhlau (in chronological order) with their models, Mozart and Beethoven appear to make up just under half, with 18 numbers each, followed by Haydn and Cherubini with 5 numbers each, Rossini with 4, Paer with 3, Kunzen, Cramer and Weber with 2, and Grétry, Clementi, Kraus, Bianchi, Méhul, Crusell and Schubert, each with 1.
LIST of66examplesof works by Kuhlau and their models. (Ex. 5~70)
The list clearly shows that Kuhlau’s music and most of its models are in the same key. The 16 exceptions among the 66 examples, that is, a little under a quarter, are ex. 6, 8, 14, 15, 17, 22, 27, 28, 32, 39, 44, 46, 48, 53, 54, and 58. The major or minor key signature is almost always retained – except in ex. 6, 22, 28, and 29, and the deviations in key are mostly a whole or a half-tone up (ex. 14, 15, 46, 58) or down (ex. 8, 22), a major or a minor third up (ex. 28, 32) or a minor third down (ex. 17), a fourth up (ex. 27), an augmented fourth up (ex. 6) or down (ex. 53), a fourth down (ex. 48), or a fifth up (ex. 39, 44, 54).
In addition to the thematic similarity at which the examples are aiming and which is the leading idea in this article, there are – particularly, in his operas – countless examples of the fact that he has had certain numbers from other operas in mind, when he wrote his own, without there being a direct thematic similarity, but it would lead us too far astray to mention them. They are listed in my “Friedrich Kuhlau. En biografi og en kritisk analyse af hans musikdramatiske produktion” (Copenhagen 1986, pp. 388-392).
The relationship to the model may be 1) of a melodic/thematic kind, as illustrated by the 66 examples above, but it may also be 2) of a compositional and/or 3) of a formal kind. In a few instances in his operas, the model (6 numbers in all) is the foundation for the whole number (ex. 20, 24, 26) and, to a lesser degree, no. 7 from his opera Elisa (based on the aria “In diesen heil’gen Hallen” from Die Zauberflöte), no. 13 terzet from Elisa (based on Mozart: Idomeneo no. 15 terzet) and, finally, the allegro part of the second act’s finale of Lulu (based on a corresponding part in Die Zauberflöte). They do not have a thematic similarity to the model and, therefore, are not on the list.
In more instances (17 operatic numbers in all), the beginning of another composition – as a rule, the first theme – has inspired Kuhlau, but he otherwise shaped his music in his own way.
In most instances, it is the case that a particular thing only (theme, chord progression, texture, key scheme) in another composition is paraphrased (op. cit., pp. 385-387).
A work takes on a special position, because it is constructed on the large formal plan of another one: Kuhlau’s cantata from 1813 “An die Freude” (containing the entirety of Schiller’s famous poem, as opposed to Beethoven, who only uses the 4 first verses in the finale of the Ninth Symphony) is shaped along the lines of Kunzen’s cantata “The Halleluja of Creation” from 1797 with text by Baggesen, printed as “Das Halleluja der Schöpfung.” Common to both works is the distribution of keys, as the outer movements’ E-flat major frames related keys. Kuhlau’s 9 movements move toward A-flat major in the first movement, and the second movement is in C minor, while the third to the eighth movements move toward more remote keys: A major, E major, A major, F major, D major, B-flat major. Kunzen’s cantata has 14 movements in the following keys: E-flat major, B-flat major, F major, C major, G major, D minor, G minor, B-flat major (3 movements), E-flat major (2 movements), A-flat major, E-flat major. Another work that shows a similar tonal spectrum (and whose premiere on January 7, 1809 in Hamburg Kuhlau as a great admirer of the composer presumably attended) is Andreas Romberg’s “Das Lied von der Glocke” to Schiller’s text.
In Kuhlau’s cantata, the fourth movement’s bass aria is reminiscent of Sarastro’s “In diesen heil’gen Hallen.” The orchestral prelude anticipates the introductory melody, a melody type especially common for Kuhlau with a movement from the third step of the scale up to the fifth step and down to the first step, harmonized with T (tonic= basic tone and its chord (c-e-g in C major)), D (the dominant tone and its chord (g-b-d in C major), here as a sixth chord with the third in the bass) and Tp (tonic parallel [relative minor] and its chord (a-c-e in C major)), as we know it from the first two measures of “The March of the Priests” that introduces Act 2 of Die Zauberflöte (ex. 8). The seventh movement’s D major soprano aria with the chorus “Freude sprudelt in Pokalen” in 6/8 time resembles the drinking song (no. 18) from the autumn section of Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten. But there are apparently no parallels of a thematic kind to Kunzen’s and Romberg’s cantatas. However, this is difficult to decide, because Kuhlau’s “An die Freude” only exists in a very fragmentary form as chorus voices for alto and solo and chorus voices for bass I and bass II, and the lack of upper voices – a soprano and a first violin voice would have done wonders – make it impossible to reconstruct the work (for additional material, see my article (in Danish) “Kuhlaus ‘An die Freude’ ” in Dansk Årbog for Musikforskning XVI 1985, Copenhagen 1988, with an attempted reconstruction of the fourth movement).
If you look at the list again, it leaps up before your eyes that certain themes (ex. 9, 10, 11, 21, 26, 30, 54, 56, 58, 60, 68, 69) quite shamelessly follow the original from start to finish, while others merely start the same and soon go their own way (ex. 6, 8, 13, 17, 18, 19, 22, 31, 41, 42, 43, 61).
By contrast, in some, the similarity only appears a few bars into the piece (ex. 37, 53).
Finally, however, certain themes have a somewhat weaker association with the model, which for other reasons – key and time signatures and compositional structure – cannot be mistaken (ex. 20, 27, 28, 49).
In the following are presented more extensive comments on some of the examples – also because they are often difficult to fit into the aforementioned categories.
Ex. 5) The similarity is strengthened by the left hand’s repeated chords in eighths.
6) 1) In his “Magic Flute” theme, Mozart recalled the opening of Clementi’s piano sonata in B-flat major op. 24, 2 from their competition for best pianist during a visit to Emperor Joseph II in Vienna in 1781. As in certain other examples, we are talking about a triadic model phenomenon (ex. 29).
This is one of the very rare instances in which the new time signature in Kuhlau makes the similarity not immediately conspicuous. Kuhlau’s 6/8 configuration of the theme is found again in the slow B-flat major movement for “linke Hand solo” in the following D major sonata in op. 6. Until something else is demonstrated, this must be deemed to be music history’s first example of a whole movement for the left hand alone. The model is probably certain passages in the slow G major movement in Haydn’s B-flat major piano trio (Hob. XV/20). Since the finale of the third sonata in F major in op. 6 are variations on the “March of the Priests” from Die Zauberflöte (Ex. 8b), and many passages in all three sonatas with their repetitions of tone lead the mind to Papageno, these three sonatas have been called Kuhlau’s “Mozart sonatas.”
9) A famous example of a close connection with the model that also applies to ex. 10) and 12) and the whole structure of all three movements.
11) So close to the original that Kuhlau actually only embellishes Haydn’s theme (comp. ex. 20, 51).
19) Kunzen’s Gyrithe had its premiere on January 30, 1807 and was performed only 6 times during that season, that is, before Kuhlau came to Denmark. Just after the first performance, Lose published some of the music that Kuhlau either read or heard in private performances (comp. ex. 38).
23) The postlude’s violin passages display rather more of a likeness than the theme itself.
41) Could Kuhlau have heard Crusell’s 2nd clarinet concerto in Stockholm during his visit to Sweden in the first half of 1815, the year in which it was composed (published by Peters the year after), or did he read it later?
42) Nor was Vinhøsten [The Grape Harvest] performed in Copenhagen, while Kuhlau lived there.
43) Once again, his Sweden trip in 1815 comes to mind with this “old-fashioned” music by Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-92), Sweden’s Mozart.
48) The 4 first tones of Haydn’s theme (the 3rd as crochet [quarter note]) are quoted literally as the first subject in the G minor duo for two flutes, op. 81, 3, I.
50) A strange and sophisticated reworking of the measures in Weber’s theme: Kuhlau’s b. 1, 2, 3 = Weber’s b. 3, 1, 2.
51, 53) The similarity of theme does not come until the third bar. In ex. 51, Kuhlau’s two first measures are an inversion of the next two.
54) Almost simply a transposition of Paer’s melody in the busy period during the completion of “Lulu.”
56) The William Shakespeare overture from January 1826 with its many parallels to Beethoven’s overture “Zur Namensfeier” (pub. 1825) is a tribute to the master, whom Kuhlau had visited six months earlier.
57) Beethoven’s little piano piece “Für Elise” (WoO 59, 27 April 1810) was not published until many years after Kuhlau’s death, but Kuhlau may have seen the score when he visited Beethoven in September 1825. The similarity is striking. Many years ago, when “Für Elise” was a great “hit” with many young people, I mistakenly corrected a little French girl who played the piece correctly by referring her to Kuhlau’s 2nd and 3rd measures instead of Beethoven’s!
58) Kuhlau had already written variations on Antonio Bianchi’s (1758-after 1817) theme
for flute solo (op. 38, 2, II) and for piano (op. 53), both in the original key of G major.
60) Again, an unusually heavy-handed plagiarism in which the third and fourth measures simply transpose Beethoven’s theme to F major.
66) The character is clearer than the thematic similarity, but the kinship with Mozart’s piano quartet immediately struck the Bohemian pianist Ignaz Moscheles at its premiere in October 1829 at the home of a wine merchant Waagepetersen – with wretched playing by Kuhlau himself due to a lack of maintenance of his pianistic skills – when he stated that the work “was not free of reminiscences.”
67) A surprising similarity to Schubert who, at that time, was relatively unknown (having died the year before), with whom Kuhlau seems to be spiritually related in many works.
68) A theme with two models. The beginning of the first measure from one of the period’s most popular overtures and the rest from his great idol Mozart.
70) When he visited Beethoven, Kuhlau was present at the premiere of Beethoven’s A minor quartet (op. 132) on September 9, 1825 at a tavern, “Zum wilden Mann,” Kuhlau thus closes the circle with his favorite key in his first major composition (ex. 5) and in his final work praising his two greatest role models.
It may be surprising that Kuhlau shows such a strong dependence in his music on other music – to an extent that I, at least, have not encountered in other composers. On this basis, many people might label him a plagiarist or an eclectic.
This is far from being the case. As already mentioned, it must be seen as a tribute to someone admired, but it can also be viewed in this way: that he was the sort of artist who often needed a foreign theme, a whole number or a part thereof, to prime the pump of his own composition. It might also cautiously be asked whether it could be a sort of sales trick for associating his own work with a popular work that people already knew. In Copenhagen at that point in time, piano quartets were a favourite, and what could be better than that Kuhlau in his 3rd piano quartet echoed Mozart’s (ex. 66)?
It might be a slightly feeble or indifferent imitation (ex. 8, 30, 68), but what is surprising is that he much more often allows a foreign idea to be resurrected in a new light in his own works, which in many cases are equal to the model or may even surpass it. A Kuhlau scholar from the 1800s, Carl Thrane, who was the first to make him seriously known in Danish music history, provided a fine formulation of his creative process with the words inventiveness in dependence.
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However, the model technique is just one side of the way he wrote music and is found only in a minor part of his many works. Kuhlau “could do it himself” and had his own personality that I shall try to describe in the following. It must be pointed out that this is only an attempt and that many stylistic features belong to the period from late Classicism to early Romanticism and seem more or less pronounced in other contemporary composers.
Melodics.
Kuhlau’s melodic style can generally be described as elegant and lithe, predominantly diatonic, that is, building upon the scale’s ordinary tones with chromatic embellishments. An example of this is a grace-note-like embellishment of the underlying tonic triad (in C major: C-E-G) with the sixth A and the augmented fourth F-sharp or over a dominant triad, the notes E and C-sharp in measure 5:
Ex. 71, Sonata for violin and piano, C major, op. 79, 3, I
Thus, the fourth interval (the notes E A in bar 1), which also appears in many other combinations, comes to hold a decisive place in Kuhlau’s melodic style. Akin to the melodic phrasing in which the sixth is a grace note for the fifth (ex. 49), it is in many others, especially in Rossini, a frequently occurring shift between a major and a minor sixth:
Ex. 72, Hugo og Adelheid [Hugo and Adelaide], no. 13 duet with chorus
Another phrase typical of the time is the accentuated grace note on the augmented first step of the scale (C-sharp in C major) in the form of a diminished seventh chord to the second step (D) (ex. 26, measure 5).
A more personal feature is an ascending arpeggio, beginning on the third tone of the scale (E in C major) and ending on the third the octave above, sometimes all the way up to the fifth or the tonic (G and C in C major), which is particularly common in his instrumental music:
Ex. 73, quintet for flute and strings, A major, op. 51, 3, I
The origin of this melodic (also in ex. 61 without the upbeat) is probably the previously mentioned “March of the Priests” from Die Zauberflöte (ex. 8), in which the melody goes from the scale’s third step up to the fifth step and down to the first. In Kuhlau, it is also found in ex. 8a and in the bass aria from “An die Freude,” inter alia, in the sonata for piano duet op. 66, 2, I, sonata for flute and piano, op. 85, II, 3rd piano quartet, op. 108, I and in the trio for 2 flutes and piano, G major, op. 119, I.
A special type of melody, especially used in second subjects, is constructed of long, uniform note values, that give the theme the character of hymn melodies (almost exclusively in minims [half notes]), predominant in Denmark in Kuhlau’s time (choral melody). (Sonata for violin and piano, op. 33, I, piano sonatas op. 34, I, op. 46, 2, op. 52, 3, III, op. 60, 3, I.)
By far the most widespread feature of Kuhlau’s melodics is an often exaggerated use of scales, which to an unusual degree even for the time characterizes the many passages between theme and section, that is, ascending and descending runs, but for good or ill also permeates the melodic itself in many of his themes (ex. 21).
As far as the metrics of Kuhlau’s themes are concerned, a period of 5(6) bars must be mentioned that appears in a delay of the end of a phrase in which the last measure of a 4-bar period is drawn out over 2 (3) bars (ex. 23). This is also found in Weyse (“I fjerne kirketårne hist”) [“Yonder in Distant Church Towers”] and seems to be a Danish tradition.
Harmonics
We are familiar from Classicism with the introductory harmonic scheme in major: T S (with the fifth in the bass and mostly with the sixth added (D in an F major chord)), D (with the third in the bass), T, which Kuhlau especially uses in the opening themes of a piano sonata:
Ex. 74, piano sonata, op. 46, 1, I
See also ex. 5, 21 (S in bar 3, D in bar 5), 22, 25, 44 (S in bar 4).
If you look at the end of a thematic period (for example, in 8 bars), you can ascertain a predilection for having themes in a major key end with a half cadence in the relative minor on the chords T S (as a sixth chord with the third in the bass) D and with the upper voice moving from the scale’s 3rd step (T) via the 4th step (S) up to the 5th step (D):
Ex. 75, Elisa, no. 3 Chorus
A harmonic process, common for the time, of which Kuhlau makes frequent use (perhaps, a bit more than other composers?) is a modulation to the mediant, that is, a key in a third relationship to the main key or the key that is modulated to and which is especially used in his operas in places where he wants to evoke great dramatic or emotional force. In C major, the mediant is E major or E-flat major, the supermediant, which is a major or a minor third above C, and A major and A-flat major, the submediant, which is a minor and a major third below C. Of these possible keys, the modulation to the submediant A-flat is by far the most common at the time – also in Kuhlau! Illustrative examples may be found in Trylleharpen [The Magic Harp], when the singer Terpander makes his entrance and frightens the pirates in chorus no. 3 (b. 318-319) from D major to B-flat major. In the introduction to the first act of “Lulu” – which otherwise contains a quite unusual ascending sequence of fifths (G major, D major, A minor, E minor, B minor, F-sharp major, B minor b. 22-28) – the coming of spring is marked by a shift from G major to E-flat major (b. 73-74), and in Lulu’s martial aria (no. 4) with a shift from A major to F major (b. 60-61).
A sequencing practice that can be found scattered throughout the music of the period, but only takes real shape in High Romanticism (for example, in Chopin), takes a central place in Kuhlau, who is often ahead of his time. It has to do with descending tonal jumps, by which is meant a false relation evoked by a descending sequencing of a T-D chord that jumps one or more times down in a double subdominant direction (SS) in ex. 76: D minor – A major, C major – G major, B-flat major – F major, A minor – E major, G major – D major, F major – C major with very Kuhlausian (double) dotted chord clashes as in other contexts:
Ex. 76, Elverhøj [The Elf Hill], overture
See also Paer’s use ex. 18b and Kraus’ ex. 43b.
Of the same type as this sequencing type is the descending tonal jump from E-flat major to D-flat major, a curious tradition from the past, connected to these two keys (Mozart: Don Giovanni, no. 19 sextet (b. 222-223), Grétry: Richard Coeur de Lion, no. 9 aria (b. 16-17), Beethoven: 3rd Symphony, I (b. 556-557, with an additional jump to C major b. 562-563)). In Kuhlau, you find them in Røverborgen, no. 5 quintet (b. 71-72, 92-93, 214-215), Trylleharpen, no. 9 first act finale (b. 145-146, 160-161, 188-189, 208-209), Lulu, no. 18 third act finale (b. 308-309 and, additionally, down to C major), piano sonata, op. 127, I. The jump also occurs a half-tone higher from E major to D major in no. 11 scene with chorus (b. 79-80), which I have not encountered in other composers!
Finally, two harmonic phenomena notable in Kuhlau must be mentioned. One is the curious, very dissonant suspension chord (some notes are continued from the previous chord), which can also be viewed as a cross between a suspension and an anticipation (one of the notes in the chord is on its way into the following chord), since middle and upper voices remain in a D7 chord, at the same time the following T chord’s third is in the bass. If the dissonance resulting therefrom is primarily viewed as a T chord, it is a suspension; if, on the other hand, it is counted as a not yet dissolved D chord, the bass’ T third seems to be an anticipation of the T chord in which the dissonance is dissolved. The most famous example (E major – A minor) is the beginning of
Ex. 77, William Shakespeare, overture
But the connection also appears in Lulu, no. 6 first act finale (b. 379-380) and in Hugo og Adelheid, no. 14 second act finale (b. 28-29).
The other harmonic phenomenon appears more frequently and is also seen in contemporary music. It is a chord shift in which some voices remain stationary and others make chromatic ascending or descending movements. The most developed examples are found in Lulu, Kuhlau’s harmonically most advanced work. In the following fiery, intensely modulating tutti movement with the aforementioned chord clashes, they appear from b. 359:
Ex. 78, Lulu, overture
Texture
Texture means the distribution of musical material in ensemble, chorus and orchestral numbers, and the combination thereof, in dramatic music and, within the instrumental music, in chamber and orchestral music. Of the three following techniques, the first two are general to the time, particularly in French and Italian opera; the third is peculiar to Kuhlau.
The first is the ostinato motif technique, which is an important part of orchestral accompaniment for solo and ensemble pieces in the operas of the time. It was first and foremost developed in French rescue operas in which the musical weight was often put on the accompaniment at the cost of the vocals. Kuhlau seems to have learned this technique from Cherubini, and he most often puts the motif in the orchestra but also – in a somewhat varied form – with the singers. There are three examples in Røverborgen: no. 2 duet (no. 3 in the German piano excerpt that is the model for IFKS 005, b. 1-133), no. 5/6 quintet (b. 117-188) and no. 18/20 duet (b. 18-30), and one in Elisa: no. 16 duet with chorus, in which it is only present in the orchestra and developed along the way. This motif technique disappears in Lulu but returns in Hugo og Adelheid (only in the orchestra) in no. 12 terzet with chorus (b. 50-65, from b. 58 also in inversion), no. 13 duet with chorus (with two motifs b. 16-45 and b. 50-102) and implemented particularly consistently in no. 14 second act finale (b. 48-164).
The second technique is a unison or harmonized chorus with staccato melodics in pronounced 4/4 rhythm with an upbeat: (rhythm example 1). This can be observed in the male chorus in the opera of the time – particularly, in Italian opera: for example, Paer (Sophonisbe, no. 14) and Rossini (Tancredi, no. 11 recitativo - aria and La gazza ladra, no. 11 aria con coro (ex. 32b) and later in Verdi in Rigoletto (“Zitti, zitti” chorus from no. 6 first act finale). It is used quite a lot in Kuhlau, where the chorus acquires a special effect when it is repeated as accompaniment to an overlying soloist’s legato melodic. This is found in three operas and one piece of incidental music: in Trylleharpen, as the pirates’ mocking rejection of the princess’ offer of payment to allow the girls to escape being kidnapped (no. 3 chorus b. 204), in Elisa in no. 5 aria and chorus, in which the chorus begins at b. 66 and encouragingly comments on the knight’s solo b. 98, and in no. 16 duet and chorus, in which the chorus shifts with the two soloist lovers so that b. 36 underlies Elisa’s melody. In Lulu, there are also two examples (both for mixed chorus!): the famous chorus of spirits with a genuine Kuhlausian flute solo in no. 13 second act finale (b. 163) and, in no. 18 third act finale (b. 20), a similar chorus (also with flute) for Sidi’s and Vela’s duet in thirds with scattered outbursts from Barca and Dilfeng. At some places in William Shakespeare, the fairy chorus sings a staccato melodic in chorus no. 1, 2, 3, but mostly without an overlying solo, which is only found in chorus no. 5.
The third technique is a method for preparing the way for second subjects – namely, by a transitional passage anticipating the second subject and continuing as its accompaniment. This must be something peculiar to Kuhlau and is not seen in other composers.
There is an example in dramatic music in no. 6/7 Adelaide’s recitative and aria (b. 74f and 163f ) in Røverborgen, in which two measures’ semiquaver [sixteenth-note] passages in first violin commence and run under the aria’s second subject in the exposition and recapitulation.
But otherwise it belongs to the instrumental music. In the overtures to Trylleharpen, Elisa and Elverhøj with a staccato in quavers [eighth notes] as an introduction to, respectively, a second subject (b. 98f, b. 232f), a march melody with rhythm: (rhythm example 2) b. 69, 212) before the second subject, and the epilogue theme (“Bægeret blinker” [“The Goblet Twinkles”) b. 145, 284. In the overtures to Lulu, William Shakespeare and Trillingbrødrene fra Damask, there are, instead of a transition before the second subject, short motifs repeated several times. In the Lulu overture, it happens before the horn melody with three repeated quavers (b. 130, 320). In the William Shakespeare overture, it happens with the triplet motif, borrowed from Beethoven’s “Zur Namensfeier” overture (m. 158, 364). Prior to the second subject in the overture to Trillingbrødrene, there is a whole complex of motifs in which the theme itself appears (b. 90, 318).
Among the chamber music examples, the following may be mentioned: 1st piano quartet, op. 32, III (a motif as a four-part fugue beneath the second subject’s “choral melody” in uniform note values), 2nd piano quartet, op.50, I, sonatas for flute and piano, op. 64, I, op.71, I, op. 83, 1, III, duets for two flutes op. 80, 1, I, op. 102, 2, II.
rhythm example 1 
rhythm example 2 
Form
The musical forms of Classicism and early Romanticism (mentioned in chronological order in music history) are as follows: theme with variations, menuet/scherzo form, sonata form and its offshoot the concerto form with written repetition of the exposition section: first, for orchestra alone (continuing in T) and thereafter with soloist (with modulation to D), and the sonata rondo with repetition of the main theme at the close of the exposition section and recapitulation and new music instead of or prior to the development section. Of course, Kuhlau was familiar with them all in his musical education, reinforced by the fact that he was especially well-versed in the music of his time.
His use of the sonata form and the sonata rondo shows a predilection, not unknown at the time but particularly developed in him, for an old-fashioned version of the sonata form whose not “completely developed” form points back to the Baroque suite form. In the three-part sonata form with exposition section – development section – recapitulation, the recapitulation is not introduced (as expected) with the first subject but with music from the exposition section’s transition between first subject and second subject. The first subject is thus missing in the recapitulation but may possibly round off the movement as a coda. The same phenomenon holds true for Kuhlau’s many sonata rondos in finale movements. In a “normal” sonata form, the first subject appears twice: as an introduction to the exposition section and as recapitulation. In the sonata rondo four times, since it also closes these two sections. In the old-fashioned type with “incomplete recapitulation,” the first subject appears only once (in rare instances, twice, when it closes the recapitulation) in a sonata form and three times in the sonata rondo (twice in the exposition section and once in the recapitulation).
Of the overwhelming number of works in the sonata form with incomplete recapitulation in first movements and overtures, some of the most-well known may be mentioned: piano sonatinas op. 20, 2, op. 55, 3, op. 55, 6, op. 59, 3, op. 60, 2, op. 88, 3. Sonatas for flute and piano op. 71, op. 83, 1, op. 85. Kuhlau uses it almost everywhere in his 9 overtures, as only those to Røverborgen, Eurydice in Tartarus and Elisa introduce the recapitulation in a “normal” way with the first subject. A distinctive example of an incomplete recapitulation is the Lulu overture (with the main theme at the end of the recapitulation), but the overtures for Trylleharpen and William Shakespeare, which are introduced with a string fugato in piano, and those for Hugo og Adelheid, Elverhøj and Trillingbrødrene fra Damask, which are correspondingly introduced with a soft string movement (the latter “quasi fugato”), have a special Kuhlausian shape that is omitted in the recapitulation, which is then introduced forcibly by the following tutti.
An incomplete recapitulation in sonata rondos, that is, in final movements, occurs in piano sonatas op. 4, op.16/127, op. 26, 1, op. 26, 3, op. 30, sonatas for flute and piano op. 64 (sonata form), op. 69, op. 83, 2, op. 83, 3, op. 110, 1, op. 110, 2, op. 110, 3, third piano quartet op. 108, sonata for violin and piano op. 33, quintet for flute and strings op. 51, 1, quartet for 4 flutes, op. 103, and trio for 2 flutes and piano, op. 119.
The sonata form was predominant from Classicism up through Romanticism and influenced other forms in instrumental music: for example, the minuet/scherzo. But it also penetrated vocal music, especially in opera and singspiel. In the aria, the lyrical, sparing and, therefore, frequently repeated text in a spacious aria gives rich occasion to make use of the sonata form, for example, in static opera seria such as Mozart’s Idomeneo. The ensembles, on the other hand, were more plot-determined (often, more and more, the more characters there were) where the changing situations and moods made it less suitable. A characteristic of the operas of the age – and later – is that the sonata form appears in a more or less curtailed form, since it would fill too much and would, in its complete form, brake the development of the plot in the lively opera buffa and singspiel. Most commonly, the development section is omitted (as it also is in many overtures); and, of the recapitulation, there is often only the first subject left, or there appears no recapitulation at all. The sonata form must be satisfied with the contrast between a first subject and a second subject and the exposition section’s modulation to D/Tp, but it is a common enough trait that one can recognize it.
Kuhlau thinks extensively along the lines of the sonata form and uses the aforementioned versions and, of course, also his favorite with incomplete recapitulation, when he writes operas – in arias but also in ensembles. Two numbers in Røverborgen have complete sonata forms (Adelaide’s and Aimar’s arias (no. 6/7 and 14/15), but in the later operas, it is more “curtailed.” In Trylleharpen no. 11, Skopas’ martial aria has an incomplete recapitulation but otherwise with its motile semiquavers [sixteenth notes] in the orchestra is strongly inspired by a corresponding aria in Cherubini’s Lodoïska, which in the concerto style has two exposition sections (in T and D) and a complete recapitulation. One finds an imposing sonata form without a development section but with powerful modulatory swings along the way and the exposition section’s second subject in the mediant G-flat major in the closing E-flat major allegro assai of Lulu’s no. 9 scene and the quartet for the opera’s protagonists Sidi, Lulu, Barca and Dilfeng.
It was more and more common in the opera of the time to have arias and ensembles consist of two parts, mostly a slow and a quick part, and here it is always the case that the features of the sonata form, as a rule in the form of a solitary exposition section, is only found in one of the two parts. The sonata form belonged to the opera. In incidental music (William Shakespeare, Elverhøj and Trillingbrødrene fra Damask), which mostly consists of shorter, strophic songs and choruses and does not contain true arias and ensembles, you do not find numbers in the sonata form.
In Adelaide’s aria (no. 18, and only in the German vocal score) in Røverborgen, the slow part consists of two different sections, respectively, in minor and major – two movements without any musical connection to each other, so to speak, a little speciality of Kuhlau that is found again far more expressly and much longer in the slow movements of the piano sonatas op. 30 (E-flat minor, E-flat major) and op. 52, 3 (D minor, D major).
As an artist, Friedrich Kuhlau is a genuine child of his age. He does not belong among the greats, but nor does he belong among the light-weights. His model technique displayed “inventiveness in dependence,” but he was – particularly in his eminent professionalism – an artist with his own inventiveness and individuality.
Gorm Busk
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